How We Work : Blog

We are rolling out a global CRM system for Imedeen that will encompass the whole suite of our applications for content management, customer profile management, e-marketing management, e-commerce management and e-loyalty management.

Read the press release here.

Joanne

The record companies and in turn their proxy, the Recording Industry of Singapore (RIAS), thinks so anyway.

Declining record sales, higher marketing dollars needed to promote our new artistes, ROI tanking. There's got to be only one reason for all of this, it has to be those darn teenagers and their rampant piracy. I digress, lots of ranting has already been spewed on the internet already, i'm not here to say how stupid they are (that fact has already been established).

The Straits Times today reported that the police raided some people's homes, confiscated their computers and recordable media. It seems every once in a while, the fat cats have to flex a bit of muscle. Like the saying goes, kill one person and you scare a hundred more. In Singapore, this tactic is definately a proven one.

Let's see what we have had to put up with so far, copy protected cds that have problems playing on certain players, wonky DRM that hobbled where i can listen to my music, rootkits that compromised my computer... and the list goes on.

Instead of coming up with stupid and alienating ideas to further discourage sales, how about introducing some of the good ones over to Singapore. Where is my itunes music store?!! Playnow and Soundbuzz don't count, their catalogues are miniscule and its not half as slick as Apple's rendition.

You would think that in the digital age, borders would be meaningless. I mean how difficult is it to allow people in Singapore to get their music from the itunes store in the US. Its not like we don't have the bandwidth. Well, greed is more powerful than technology it seems. Nothing like wanting to line your pockets to put consumer interest on the back burner.

As consumers, the most powerful weapon in out arsenal is to vote with our dollars. Refuse to buy CDs from artistes that are published by the major recording labels. We have to get it into their thick skulls that we are the consumers here, its your job to make us happy not ours to jump through hoops to prove we are not criminals. Until they get their act together and start making the process of purchasing music simple again, i say we spit on their faces.

Indeed, do you want to be no. 11? :) 

Update: Looks like some of them are getting the big idea after all, albeit in the US. Disney/ABC and Fox to my knowledge are embracing the internet finally. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7946.html

Dan

Technorati Tags: Piracy, Music Downloads, Singapore, RIAS, MP3s
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Starhub today announced a little bit of "bait" to get thier dial-up customers to try some delicious green broadband. The idea it seems is to get these stalwarts of the 56K to try the blazing quickness of 4mbps, and once they have experienced the way the real internet is supposed to be, there is no turning back.

On the face of it, the logic is kinda sound. All you have to do is trump up like $80 to get a Starhub modem and ta-da! instant speedy internet. A win win situation for dial up users. Of course the devil is in the details.

Let's take a look at some of the sites that Starhub is making available to this scheme, Live Messenger, Yahoo Singapore (including mail), MSN Singapore (including Hotmail) and all domains ending with .gov.sg. This is by no means the exhaustive list (you can go here to check out the full offerings) and they do say they will be updating it but for a start this are the sites that i would be interested in.

So i have lightning fast instant messaging and i can check my emails with super quick efficiency. Not to mention, i can now search for stuff i need and get my results lickity split, but if i actually want to go to those results, i'm kinda out of luck.

I will give credit to Starhub for trying though, its a valiant effort to move more of thier dialup customers to the more lucrative broadband market. The problem is those people that have not moved over are not doing so for a reason. Making their switching costs high ($80 for something they already think they do not need) and severly limiting the real broadband experience is not going to make many of them switch over.

My suggestion to Starhub is this. Make it so ridiculously stupid for people not to move over. Send free cable modems to your dial up subscribers (0 swtiching costs). Don't limit where they can go (give them the real experience). Charge them a flat fee that is competitive with what they are already paying for dial-up (make it a no-brainer) and limit them by data or time usage instead. They are already light users and will be hard pressed to break a reasonable limit of say 5gigs a month, and at the same time, this will discourage the heavy data leechers from exploiting this new plan.

Link to Starhub's press release:

StarHub Press Release

Dan

earth9 is going to have its very own podcast soon. We are probably going to start small, maybe a couple of minutes to just have a quickfire roundtable about the latest buzz in the online marketing sphere.  

I'm going to try to blog about all the nasty and interesting bits so that if you ever want to try doing your own corporate podcast, at least you will have my experience to have a look at.

I'm probably going to leave out the technical details on how to actually create a podcast, there are tons of resources out there already and focus on the marketing and tension that exists in such a new medium.

It seems that nowadays a lot of companies both large and small are keen to get on the buzzword bandwagon. Having a podcast or a vidcast on your corporate site is seen as being "cool" and in touch with today's consumers.

The problem is trying to create something interesting and useful for listeners while not giving your company PR department a heart attack. Invariably, most corporate podcasts turn out "safe" and boring and are no more than commercials using another medium.

Step #1
Getting management to agree that the customer is the top priority.

e9's podcast will focus on services, technologies and ideas that we feel will interest businesses thinking of exploring or improving on thier marketing mix. If we step on a few toes so be it. As long as our listeners find value in what we are saying, that's the only ROI we are gunning for right now.

I'll be updating this as we go along, so just check back every now and again.

dan

Technorati Tags:podcast, corporate blogging, vidcast, starting your own podcast, start podcasting, hurdles to corporate podcasting

Estée Lauder launched for the first time last week its first online ad campaign to Advanced Night Repair Concentrate, its newest antiaging treatment. The campaign features a web site where women can post their testimonials and advertisements on related beauty, lifestyle and health news sites / blogs. The brand is well known to favor traditional advertising so this online push is exciting in its recognition of the importance of online research and word-of-mouse.

What puzzled me was the campaign execution. The first thing I did on learning about the campaign was to google it. No results (paid or natural) within the top 2 pages took me to the site. To find the link, I went to the main web site - there was no sign of the campaign there either.

This is prevalent of many online campaigns. The web allows you to be more targeted  but also opens up other issues – there are multiple channels and processes you need to cover in order to ensure that not only can you reach the customer but the customer can reach you. Paid search buys, highlights on the main entry pages should be de-facto items on most campaign checklists. Other possible considerations include emails to existing house lists and tie-ups with online distributors (since they do deep search buys as well).

That being said, for big companies, the underlying web organization is often not optimized to support regional and global campaign execution, both in terms of infrastructure and human resources. That’s a whole other discussion - more on that later.

Joanne